Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance used his senatorial power to block the confirmations of U.S ambassadors who supported the rights and visibility of the LGBTQ community.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the newspaper received a leaked copy of a questionnaire Vance sent to diplomatic nominees to determine their stances on various LGBTQ issues.

If a nominee responded affirmatively, Vance placed a hold on their nomination, preventing them from receiving up-or-down confirmation votes in the U.S. Senate.

At the height of his campaign to weed out LGBTQ-supportive professionals, Vance placed holds on more than 30 nominees for Senate-confirmed positions at the State Department, particularly those tapped to fill assignments in Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries.

Under Senate rules, holds can either be lifted by the senator who imposed them, or can be defeated via cloture vote.

However, the time required to bring around a cloture vote slows the confirmation process, denying unanimous consent to proceed with an up-or-down vote on a series of nominations, and forcing the party in power to call for individual votes. As a result, many positions at U.S. embassies abroad were either left vacant or were temporarily filled by lower-level officials.

Vance does not have a seat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which typically deals with such nominations.

The questionnaire Vance used to determine diplomats’ views on LGBTQ-related issues asked several questions about LGBTQ visibility and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Among those questions were whether diplomats would support increasing the number of gender-neutral bathrooms in overseas State Department facilities, help increase access to resources for gender dysphoria and gender-affirming care to State Department employees and their dependents, and promote policies encouraging inclusion for LGBTQ children at overseas schools.

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The questionnaire asked nominees how they would implement Pride Month celebrations, how they would implement the Biden administration’s goals of making the advancement of LGBTQ rights a foreign policy priority, where they felt it appropriate to display “Progress” Pride flags at U.S. embassies or consulates, and whether they would implement diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility criteria for determining advancement for positions under their management.

Vance’s desire to probe the specific views of ambassador nominees on LGBTQ issues is in keeping with his vocal opposition to “woke” concepts or ideas.

The existence of the questionnaire was reported by Politico last year, but Vance declined to share it publicly.

Barbara Stephenson, a former ambassador to Panama who served in senior positions under both Republican and Democratic administrations, told the Post that Vance’s desire to rout out pro-LGBTQ nominees forced nominees to navigate a narrow path between appeasing a U.S. senator and contradicting President Joe Biden’s assertion that LGBTQ rights are a form of human rights.

“It puts career diplomats in a bind to be asked to go on the record commenting on how they would support policies that are favored by the current administration but may not be by the next,” Stephenson said. “One party may support climate change agreements or DEI, and another may not. Those career diplomats are required to support the policy of the administration in power, even when that means changing positions they have previously argued for or against.”

Unsurprisingly, conservatives claim there’s nothing out of bounds with Vance’s attempt to block pro-LGBTQ nominees.

“It is not out of line to insist that ambassadors are professionally suited to focusing on the job at hand, as opposed to trying to push what, in most of these countries will be viewed as ultraradical social issues,” Wade Miller, vice president of the conservative think tank Center for Renewing America, told the Post. “Vance is in the upper tier of Republicans who have been talking about these issues and taking them on seriously.”

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In one instance, Vance railed against the nomination of Stephanie Sullivan, a career diplomat chosen to be Biden’s envoy to the African Union.

Vance accused Sullivan, the former ambassador to Ghana, of being “woke” and promoting a “progressive social policy” on gender identity when she oversaw an embassy that flew the Pride flag — an action that is currently prohibited under a provision in a government spending bill that Biden signed into law in March in order to avoid a government shutdown.

“Why do we have a diplomatic corps that is taking a hotly contested issue in an American political context and demanding the African nations follow the lead of the far-left instead of doing what they think that they should do?” Vance said in a speech on the Senate floor lambasting Sullivan. 

The State Department countered that Sullivan’s decades-long career in the Foreign Service was “exemplary” and said that Vance’s “unfounded criticism[s] against her work do not accurately reflect her service to our country.”

According to the Post, Vance was highly skeptical of Biden’s nominees, engaging in back-and-forth conversations with senior aides to President Biden, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about his concerns.

Eventually, Vance and State Department officials reached an understanding in which he was satisfied that the Biden administration would not place ideology over national security concerns.

In response, Vance released 30 nominations, allowing those appointees to receive confirmation votes — except for Sullivan and David Kostelancik, Biden’s appointee for the position of U.S. ambassador to Albania. Sullivan was eventually confirmed last month through a cloture vote, while Kostelancik’s nomination remains on hold.

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Kostelancik, who previously served as the charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, was reprimanded by Hungarian officials in 2017 for comments he made about the government’s attempts, under right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to seize control of the news media to push out propaganda.

For Republicans, who look to Orbán’s brand of right-wing populism as something they’d like to replicate in the United States, and for Vance, who particularly idolizes Orbán’s pro-natalist and anti-LGBTQ policies, any criticism of such fascist inclinations is tantamount to blasphemy.

Vance has made no secret of his efforts to rid the diplomatic corps of people with so-called “woke” views on social issues. He seemed to relish the Post story by issuing a snarky post on X, writing, “They got me.”

They got me pic.twitter.com/J2YYXDCoSz

— JD Vance (@JDVance) July 20, 2024

Trump supporters and conservatives lavished praise on Vance for blocking the nominees.

“Another great reason you should be Vice President!” wrote one X user.

Another great reason you should be Vice President!

— Steve Ferguson (@lsferguson) July 20, 2024

“Imagine believing this is a bad thing,” wrote another.

Imagine believing this is a bad thing 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) July 20, 2024

“How much did you pay them to write this awesome advertisement?” added a third.

How much did you pay them to write this awesome advertisement?

— Tristan Tate (@TateTheTalisman) July 20, 2024

“Your first anti liberal medal. Wear it like a badge of honor. You are definitely doing something right. Congratulations on your nomination. You are going to do great,” wrote a fourth user.

Your first anti liberal medal. Wear it like a badge of honor. You are definitely doing something right. Congratulations on your nomination. You are going to do great

— TonemanLives 🇺🇸🇮🇹 (@TonemanLives) July 22, 2024

The Human Rights Campaign criticized Vance’s actions and reiterated its support for the Biden administration’s goal of defending LGBTQ rights abroad.

“The United States has a responsibility to champion human rights around the globe — and that includes the freedom for LGBTQ+ people to live and love without fear,” HRC’s Brandon Wolf said in a statement. “Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are cut from the same anti-LGBTQ+ cloth and have made clear that, should they get the keys to the Oval Office, they will demolish America’s values on the world stage.”